


Mark Me

by illyriantremors



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Minor Angst, Post-ACOWAR, Rhys POV third person, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 13:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8893189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illyriantremors/pseuds/illyriantremors
Summary: The war is over, bringing both Rhys and Feyre back home to Velaris together. But before they can start again, Rhys has a simple request to make of Feyre that heals more wounds than one. <3





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sv_you_know_who_I_am](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sv_you_know_who_I_am/gifts).



> Written as a ficswap with Sarahviehmann, who asked for something fluffy and romantic from Rhysey.

He carries her into the room. Her body has come a long way growing in strength and power. But tonight Rhys feels the softness, savors the way her muscles melt where his fingertips press in along her thighs and back, where he cradles her against him.

They’ve never been able to properly live together as man and wife inside these four walls.

But the war is over now and she is home.

Feyre - his Feyre.

And he wants to make sure he does this right, for her.

He never breaks eye contact, choosing to drink in the blue that has sparked to life behind the crystalline grey of her eyes. There were nights he thought he might never see these eyes again, nights he didn’t sleep or awoke in such a blind panic because he was afraid he would forget their shape, where the flecks of sky were tucked away in their depths, how precisely her lashes curled.

If he weren’t carrying her, his arms would collapse. Touching her - it’s not like clasping a glass to drink or a sword to wield. His Feyre is unbreakable, but Rhys knows that he is not. To lose contact with her would be to break himself, so drop her he will not.

He lays her down instead, tenderly, on the bed they’ve shared together only a few scattered times before the war stole away his bride of night. And he inspects every feature of her taking time to roam over her skin, her scent, her touch, stopping at her heart.

Rhys hears it beating away inside her chest, pressing his ear delicately over it. He wants to press and press and press until he sinks right in, but too much might burn him alive before he even begins.

So he stays content to just listen to that gentle melody. If he listens closely enough, he can hear it pumping out his name, the name Feyre’s blood carries in her veins singing only for him.

Feyre runs her fingers through his hair once and leaves them to rest buried atop him. A hum purrs in her throat over that delicious melody soaring in her chest and Rhysand can feel it crawling over his skin, soaking into the core of his body until it is reverberating down the bond between them and he thinks that this is what dying feels like - it’s not a bloody fight on a battlefield or a knife in the back. It’s this. It’s her. It’s the all-consuming feeling that if he does not quiet the ache overtaking him, he will fall apart in her arms begging her to save him.

She always saves him.

He pries his ear away from her chest and locks eyes with her once more. He loves the look of her beneath him, how she accepts his heat and the weight of him over her. He can hold her, love her, cherish her - just like this. Most nights, he would take her no other way.

Just as he does now with his arms binding her to him and his wings unfolding behind him to shield them from the idea that anything exists beyond this bed except for them. Feyre’s eyes watch his wings expand and her breathing seems to sync with the motion, her chest rising and falling as each bone and membrane uncurls itself to guard above her. She looks like she could cry.

They’ve wanted this. For so long. It could have been a day in the Spring Court. It could have been a hundred. It all would have felt like an eternity to wait to have this again, but never once did Rhys doubt that it would happen even if he was terrified it wouldn’t.

“A thought for a thought?” Feyre asks.

The game is as old as their story, Rhys thinks. The very first move in the wicked dance that had set the rhythm of their courtship. “Aye,” Rhysand nods wanting not one thought, but many. He could number Feyre’s thoughts as numerous as the stars in the sky and the vast galaxies beyond and still be starving for more. “You first.”

“I’m thinking that you were wrong when you said I was your salvation. I’m thinking that you are mine. That you’ve saved me and I don’t know how I ended up here, to be so lucky to have the High Lord who risked his people whom valued above all else just to save me. I’m thinking that I love you more than what my life is worth.”

The admission causes the bond to throb in agony between them. Rhys can feel it like a living thing. It thickens and it pulls, going taut at her words, hearing the truth in them, and gasping at the weight of that truth.

He wants to sob at the unbidden guilt she carries. No other truth could be plainer to him: her life is worth an infinite number of his.

He wants to kiss her, to let her know she’s wrong. She fills his life to the brim, the only thing that ever kept him alive long before that Mountain and long, long after. But if he kisses her, he will not stop and there is business between them to attend to first.

Rhys closes his eyes and rests his forehead against Feyre’s. He pictures the thread of their bond between them and focuses on how it strengthens more and more by the second. He feels it move, hears it whisper in his mind all the things he must do to survive this existence with her.

“I’m thinking,” Rhys says, “that I have something I would very much like to ask you.”

He opens his eyes and Feyre is looking up at him with a shine in her regard. The corners of her lips flick up slowly as her hands slide down to cup his face. Just that slight adjustment - that brief repose upon him where her thumbs slide like silk in a sweeping embrace of his cheeks is enough to send his eyes fluttering closed once more and his body shaking.

Feyre. All he sees and knows is Feyre.

“You can have anything of me, Rhysand,” Feyre whispers and the room goes preternaturally still with quiet.

Rhys swallows once. Twice. Three times before he can get his mouth to work. He takes his right hand and guides it across their bodies to hers, the one he marked her with the night before everything had gone wrong with Hybern. The night they had run out like two teenagers madly, chaotically in love, had run the streets of Velaris under low-lit lanterns and behind the shadows so she could commit herself to him and his court forever.

His skin is a stark contrast to her own with the inky blue tattoo of the High Lady declaring the pledge between them. Rhys grips her hand and finds that his own is bleak in comparison - empty.

“I want you to mark me,” he tells her, opening his eyes again so he can watch the moment she realizes, the moment she knows that he is utterly, irretrievably hers. “I want you to claim me by your own design.”

It’s only fair. Feyre wears the symbol of their love proudly for all to see. He wants that too. He wants it so desperately. The thought of not matching her in any way threatens to make him physically sick. He would have no one doubt their match wherever they might go.

He is her mate. So he shall earn it.

Feyre’s mouth parts suddenly. The gasp that quivers out is ungodly, painful almost. Rhys is near to ensnaring that little lip of hers in between his teeth to stop it trembling lest Feyre fall down, down, down and drag him with her.

“How?” is all she asks and he can see the light shining in her eyes. There is a love there - a love so fierce, no magic would ever even dare to dream of breaking it.

“I’ll show you.”

He guides her up and she sits in front of him still holding on to his hand while her legs go around to either side of him. He moves her fingers so that they are poised upon his skin and bids her shut her eyes.

He remembers the day he gave her the tattoo for the bargain that had started it all. How he had made it hurt. That night nearly killed him. He’d taken her bones into his grasp and twisted them so painfully, he imagined her screams were his own. Cauldron knew he deserved the pain and worse. Sometimes he thought he may never stop repaying that debt for destroying her.

But he gave her life that night, too. He has to remind himself constantly. Without that bond, neither of them might be here sharing in this night where a new bond is forged.

Rhys caresses Feyre’s mind until the doors unlock and their powers merge so swiftly into one another it is like a pair of long lost lovers rushing through the fields of time and space to reunite. They blend, they merge, they match and suddenly, Rhys can scent the lightest traces of citrus and jasmine again coming off Feyre.

My mate. My mate. My mate.

His soul will beat the sound forever.

He shows her how to wield the Night and hone the Darkness over him. He’s not even consciously aware of being in his own body anymore as the power floods through Feyre, slinking down her arm and winding itself through the delicate curves of her tattoo until it is thrumming in her artist’s fingers ready to paint the canvas of his soul.

The first stroke shatters him heart and soul. His head falls forward into the crook of her neck while she paints, breathing deeply in the rich scent of her for solace.

It does not hurt and that is what ruins him so completely. It heals him. Knits him together and makes him whole. The little places where her fingers sketch her heart upon him mend and he can feel the threads connecting through their skin, all from that one simple touch.

And her power - it’s overwhelming. He feels it like he felt his own for the first time when it was a wild and illustrious creature. Her power he will not try to tame. He wants to unleash it instead for him to devour.

When her fingers break away, it is both a punishment and a mercy. “Rhysand,” she prays in his ear, bidding him wake up and see her work - her masterpiece.

Where the lines of the Illyrian tattoos at his shoulder are harsh and uncompromising, Feyre has continued them further down his arm in the manner of her own, easing them into a softness that sings of stars and passion, an infinite night. It fades into a black sheen that envelops his skin at the wrist, turns the ink a lighter shade of blue so that the swirls of the universe might stand out upon his hand. He wonders what she had thought to place within his palm.

As if in answer, Feyre turns his hand over and there, right in the center at the very heart of him, is a beautiful shining orb. It waxes and wanes like a crescent moon with the tides of time and when Rhys wishes to see within its sphere, it glows, revealing the faintest touches of Feyre’s magic as she answers his call.

Now he will match her. Now she will call to him.

Feyre opens her right palm before him and Rhysand knows what she wants. He knows because it is all he has wanted for many months now. To not only feel and sense her, but to hear her again in the deepest recesses of his mind.

“Finish me,” she says. “Bring me back.”

Rhys captures her High Lady’s hand in his and feels the glow of the orb thrum with life between them, rounding itself between their palms with his essence as it brushes over Feyre and the eye. The glow travels into her, weaving a trail across her tattoo etched in darkness that swivels and jumps off her skin at each new turn, restoring the bond, the bargain - everything. He watches it work allowing the Night to gather around them until they might be made of that very same Darkness themselves. Pockets of light erupt and twinkle and fade and renew around them in an endless cycle as the bond between them restores and Rhysand realizes he was wrong. Now he can die. Now he can be made perfect.

Now he is complete.

And suddenly, he can feel and taste and touch and see that eye come to life on her skin and Feyre is everywhere within and without his being just as she had been before the war had spilled their blood for one another.

He does not allow the dust to settle, not for one solitary moment as he summons his magic and out of the smoke sits a small and ordinary box - one Feyre’s fingers have held before. He feels the delight - the adoring enthusiasm shuddering out of her down the bond as she whispers her thanks into his mind.

The sapphire sits restored on Feyre’s hand in eternal beauty. Rhysand kisses each and every fingertip as he slides it on, each one that penned him with such remarkable skill, that held him when he was weak, that clung to him when he was strong.

“Feyre - Feyre, you are my soul.”

His voice is raw, even when spoken silently between them through the bond. Likely it disappeared somewhere in the stardust surrounding them some time ago, but - oh, how he missed talking to her like this.

Feyre draws him over her. “My mate,” she breathes, sending new life into him. How long can she restore him like that before he explodes from the intensity of it? “My wondrous, handsome, loving mate.”

Finally, he kisses her, their bodies melding together atop the sheets while the galaxies collide in a dance of colors and lights throughout the room. Velaris has never seen such vibrancy before.

Their hands entwine as they mate again, two symbols of the High Lord and Lady that dreamed. They did not release that entire night.

Not once.

And Rhysand would never dream of dying again.

xx


End file.
